The Spectre of Hawthorne Manor
(2025)(The second book in the Hawthorne Blackout Mystery series)
A novel by Diana Beckett
Hawthorne Manor is supposed to heal broken men. Instead, it hides them.
When a decorated Spitfire pilot disappears from his bed during a thunderstorm, volunteer air raid warden Iris Lockwood is ordered to keep out of it. The family that owns the manor funds half the town. The War Office needs the scandal buried. And the police already have a tidy explanation.
Then Iris receives a letter from the missing man’s sister, begging her to investigate. The message includes one detail no one else could know. A crude drawing of a hooded figure that matches the symbol Iris found at the end of her last case, beside a dead man and a falsified report.
Someone at Hawthorne Manor is tied to the same secret network that has been staging ‘accidents’ in the blackout. Someone who knows far too much about Iris’s past.
Posing as a companion to a nervous relative, Iris steps inside the manor and finds a world of locked rooms, watching servants and wounded officers who trust nobody. Alongside Sergeant Tom Hadley and sharp tongued widow Beatrice North, she starts to pull at threads the family will do anything to cut.
Because the spectre walking Hawthorne Manor is no ghost. It is a living person with a list of sinners to punish, a direct line to an old monastic order on the headland, and their own idea of justice.
If Iris fails, another officer will ‘disappear.’ If she succeeds, she risks exposing the one secret Hawthorne Harbor can never afford to see in daylight.
The Spectre of Hawthorne Manor is Book 2 in the Hawthorne Blackout Mysteries, a gripping World War II historical whodunit featuring a fierce female sleuth, a slow burn partnership with the town’s most stubborn sergeant, and a seaside community where every blackout hides another lie. Can be read as a standalone mystery, but best enjoyed after The Blackout Murders.
Genre: Mystery
- On the windswept cliffs above Hawthorne Harbor, the grand house known as Hawthorne Manor has been turned into a private convalescent home for injured officers. The official story is all charity and sacrifice. The locals know better. Patients vanish without explanation. Servants hear footsteps in empty corridors. Someone has given the house a new name.
When a decorated Spitfire pilot disappears from his bed during a thunderstorm, volunteer air raid warden Iris Lockwood is ordered to keep out of it. The family that owns the manor funds half the town. The War Office needs the scandal buried. And the police already have a tidy explanation.
Then Iris receives a letter from the missing man’s sister, begging her to investigate. The message includes one detail no one else could know. A crude drawing of a hooded figure that matches the symbol Iris found at the end of her last case, beside a dead man and a falsified report.
Someone at Hawthorne Manor is tied to the same secret network that has been staging ‘accidents’ in the blackout. Someone who knows far too much about Iris’s past.
Posing as a companion to a nervous relative, Iris steps inside the manor and finds a world of locked rooms, watching servants and wounded officers who trust nobody. Alongside Sergeant Tom Hadley and sharp tongued widow Beatrice North, she starts to pull at threads the family will do anything to cut.
Because the spectre walking Hawthorne Manor is no ghost. It is a living person with a list of sinners to punish, a direct line to an old monastic order on the headland, and their own idea of justice.
If Iris fails, another officer will ‘disappear.’ If she succeeds, she risks exposing the one secret Hawthorne Harbor can never afford to see in daylight.
The Spectre of Hawthorne Manor is Book 2 in the Hawthorne Blackout Mysteries, a gripping World War II historical whodunit featuring a fierce female sleuth, a slow burn partnership with the town’s most stubborn sergeant, and a seaside community where every blackout hides another lie. Can be read as a standalone mystery, but best enjoyed after The Blackout Murders.
Genre: Mystery
Used availability for Diana Beckett's The Spectre of Hawthorne Manor